Nearly everything in ILLINOIS revolves
around Chicago , the largest and most exciting
of the Great Lakes cities. At the state's northeastern corner,
on the shores of Lake Michigan , Chicago has
a skyline to rival any city's, plus a gamut of top-rated museums,
restaurants and caf?s, and innumerable bars and nightclubs paying
homage to the city's strong jazz and blues heritage. Seventy-five
percent of the state's twelve million population live within commuting
distance of Chicago's energetic center, which controls the bulk
of the state economy - Illinois is the third largest agricultural
producer in the US. The sole exception to the endless flat prairies
elsewhere is far to the south, where the forested Shawnee
Hills rise between the Mississippi and Ohio rivers.
The contrast between the quiet rural hinterlands
and the buzzing urban center could hardly be greater. That said,
Illinois does hold a few places to head for, though, apart from
a couple of mildly exciting college towns, most are of historic
rather than current interest. First explored and settled by the
French, in 1763 the area that's now Illinois was sold to the English.
Granted statehood in 1818, Illinois remained a distant frontier
until the mid-1830s when, after a series of uprisings, the native
Sauk were subjugated and settlers began to arrive
in sizable numbers. Among these were the first followers of Joseph
Smith, founder of the Mormon Church, who established a large colony
along the Mississippi at Nauvoo. The Mormons
met with suspicion and persecution and, after Smith was murdered
by a lynch mob in 1844, fled west to Utah.
Other early immigrants included the young Abraham
Lincoln , who practiced law from 1837 onward in Springfield
, the state capital and home of a wide range of Lincolniana, including
his restored home, his law offices and vari ous other period buildings
and artifacts, as well as his monumental tomb. Indeed, Illinois'
self-proclaimed nickname - emblazoned on its car license plates
- is "Land of Lincoln," and many other central Illinois
towns claim important roles in the making of the sixteenth US
president.
